Stung

by William Deverell

  “What’s your degree in, Jake? Gender, racial, and cultural stereotyping?”

  “Hey, do me a favour. I want to be in court this afternoon. I’m an essential member of the Crown’s team, so I don’t have to be excluded, counsel okayed that. I want to see the two surviving eyewitnesses in action.”

  “You’re assigned to them. You prepped them. And you can babysit them. I’ve got my own stable.” She’s handling most of the experts.

  Today’s two eyewitnesses are Barney Wilson and Irwin Fleiger, the boneheaded night watchmen. They keep sneaking out of the witness room for a smoke, and dawdle coming back through security. They need babysitting. “Please? This judge is itching to bust someone for being late.”

  “All right, enjoy, you owe me one.”

  Maguire winces from his strained neck as he glances to the right. “Don’t turn around. Rockin’ Ray Wozniak has parked himself two tables behind you with his new groupie.” Another stereotype-defying Asian, the sexy mystery woman known as Sooky-Sue. Probably one of the gang, the Earth Survival Rebellion.

  He’d heard cop-talk that Wozniak’s ex, Lucy Wales, had left him for some rich money manager. Good luck to her, is Maguire’s attitude. He remembers from the bust in the antique store how she winked at him, like they were sharing a shameful secret. Enjoying a little street penilingus? Yolo. Maguire had got aroused by Gaylene’s head on his crotch, but what man wouldn’t? Forget it. Ancient history.

  Rockin’ Ray Wozniak doesn’t seem aware he’s accidentally under surveillance, in fact doesn’t seem aware of anything. Panic Disorder have been doing regular late-night gigs in a club, so he’s got to be among the walking dead. Astoundingly, this super-stoner has stayed clean since he got busted eight months ago.

  It bugs Maguire that Khan laid that manslaughter on Wozniak, because the jury’s going to think the prosecution is reaching. Now there’ll be a sideshow over Wozniak being so wrecked on hallucinogens he was mentally incapable of a criminal act.

  Gaylene resists turning around. “What’s going on over there?”

  “Sooky’s doing all the talking. Ray looks sullen. Maybe she’s cutting him off.”

  “Of what?”

  “Sex.”

  “Or drugs?”

  Maguire shakes his head. “T.J. Gully looks after him, his manager. But he’s not using, he knows he can’t order a beer without getting thrown in the nick. Right now he’s being served a fizzy water.”

  “Ready to go?”

  “I was thinking of coffee. And maybe dessert.”

  “Get your coat on, bub.” She goes off to pay.

  He winces again as he grabs his coat, then remembers he kept half an Oh Henry! in its left pocket for emergencies.

  * * *

  The court doesn’t reassemble at two on the dot because the first witness, Barney Wilson, the Sarnia plant’s inside guy, had a last-minute need to pee. Maguire visualizes him dribbling into the urinal while singing “Home on the Range” to get up his courage.

  Barney has been on the dole for the entire six months since he got fired, and at age twenty-nine he’s washed up in the security business he trained for. He thinks Chemican blackballed him, but Maguire told him not to say that in court, it only muddies the waters.

  Minutes pass. Gaylene will come after Maguire’s nuts with a carving knife for dumping this hoser on her. There’s nothing he can do. He’ll stay right here. Five of the Sarnia Seven sit there just shrugging and smiling, but Rivie Levitsky is busy with pen and notepad. She looks up in thought, then down, scribbling away again.

  At five minutes after two, the judge gets Miss Pucket on the horn and tells her to bring in the jury, and they troop in from their door, Justice Donahue from hers, bristling, demanding to know the cause of the delay.

  Khan calmly explains his first witness had to respond unexpectedly to “a physical necessity.” He and the defence counsel mollify the judge by using the gap time to file a bunch of admissions of fact, minor matters like continuity of exhibits and dates and times and locations, plus entering a pile of ten-by-eight photographs that aren’t being contested.

  That doesn’t kill enough time, and Donahue scans the big room, the court staff, the Crowns, as if looking for someone to blame, finally settling on Maguire.

  Beauchamp notices that and pretends to be helpful: “Inspector Maguire seems ready and eager to brave the witness stand.”

  “Let us see if that can work,” says Khan, falsely enthusiastic. He bends to Maguire’s ear: “Well, we’re off to an excellent start, aren’t we? If that moron isn’t here in twenty seconds, we’ll have to start with Fleiger, so let’s make sure he hasn’t wandered . . .”

  He trails off, swivels to see two court officers march in Barney Wilson, once again not making a good impression, unshaven, shirt not tucked in, having trouble locating the witness stand, and, on finally being led there, mumbling his answers so he has to repeat them.

  The jurors aren’t paying attention anyway, they’re either looking at a big screen showing the design of the plant or at photos taken inside and out. Aluminum cladding, thick, square posts and beams, asphalt roof. It was built in the seventies, started off its life as a lumberyard warehouse, then an adhesives factory, a partial upper floor added when Chemican took it over.

  The foreman, a sixty-year-old architect, hogs the interior layout. He designs suburban mini-malls, so Khan decided he isn’t likely to be an environmentalist. The pre-med student, Abbie Lee-Yeung, is about the only one listening to Wilson describe his nightly routines.

  Barney seems to have suffered permanent memory damage about the post-midnight hours of September 12. There came a loud crash. Then, pursued by a giant, pry-bar-wielding maniac, he frantically sloshed through the Vigor-Gro while an alleged time bomb ticked off the last deadly seconds. There’s no chance Barney will ID Wozniak as the maniac, so Khan does what he can with this unsatisfactory so-called eyewitness, then turns him over to the defence.

  Beauchamp strolls over to the jury box, and he says, “Now, Mr. Wilson, my hearing isn’t as sharp as it used to be, and sometimes that’s a blessing, but not today. So I want you to speak into that microphone loud and clear. If I can hear you over here, the jury can for sure.”

  Judge’s bench, counsel table, and witness box are all miked, but Beauchamp doesn’t need any electronic help. He has this deep baritone that’s clear and resonant without seeming stretched or even loud.

  “Yes, sir,” says Wilson, “I’ll do my best.”

  “Excellent. Can I call you Barney? I have an old trusted friend called Barney.”

  Maguire suspects Beauchamp’s old friend is more blarney than Barney, but he admires the smiling old fraud’s folksy technique, getting the witness all relaxed before pouncing. Praising Barney for his good deeds with the Boy Scouts and his work ethic, his eighteen months of loyal service to Chemican, leaving the impression he got screwed when they axed him over this one incident. “And now you can’t find work.”

  “Because they blackballed me.”

  “I would assume your union has filed a grievance over your firing.”

  “No, they don’t have no union at that plant.”

  The lead actor for the defence obviously knows that already, this was mainly for Juror Six, treasurer of a Steamfitters local in North York.

  “Okay, you were taken on by Chemican two years ago. Who actually did the hiring?”

  “Mr. Griffin. Howell Griffin. Director of Security.”

  “He interviewed you, and liked you, and hired you, yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And when did he put you on the night shift?”

  “About maybe four months in, after I did a training course.”

  “And who instructed you how to do an hourly walkabout inside the plant?”

  “That would be Mr. Griffin.”

  “And these hourly patr
ols would take you how long?”

  “Twelve minutes on average. I kept a log, it’s all in there.”

  “I assume it shows your last log-in was midnight on Tuesday, September tenth.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Had to be.”

  “You always started exactly on the hour?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Why?”

  “I dunno. Mr. Griffin told me to.”

  “And who gave you instructions to stay out of the upstairs laboratory?”

  “That would be Mr. Griffin again.”

  And it’s also Mr. Griffin who gave the night crew the codes to the plant’s lockable doors from week to week. And of course Mr. Griffin hired the dead temp, Archie Gooch. And did Griffin also give Gooch the codes for his one-night stand? Barney says he must have.

  Maguire can’t figure why Beauchamp is throwing all these darts at Howie Griffin, as if trying to blame the whole thing on him. Maybe it’s a red herring. Azra Khan’s squinty look suggests he’s wondering too. Judge Donahue is hunched forward, waiting for someone to go off track so she can assert authority.

  The Sarnia Seven remain serene, except for Rivie Levitsky, still toiling over her notepad. What’s she writing? Poetry? Rants for Facebook? Letters to her lover? Azra Khan must wonder too, because he gives her lots of looks. Probably wondering what it would be like with her.

  Beauchamp keeps stirring Archie Gooch into the mix: “So if he had the code for the back door, and he unlocked that door, would you be aware from your workstation that that door was open and accessible?”

  “No, because of all the tanks and machinery in between. We didn’t have a security camera setup.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, there was talk of it, but Mr. Griffin put it off.”

  Beauchamp pretends he’s shocked: “Mr. Griffin, your head of security, didn’t want security cameras?”

  “Yeah. Because of the cost, I think.”

  “You were listening to western music on the radio?”

  “A station I like.”

  “And with that radio on, you wouldn’t hear the back door being shut?”

  “Not unless it was slammed. I always checked it every tour, and it was always locked.”

  Beauchamp seems about to conclude, half sits, but when Nancy Faulk whispers something he bounces up again, rummages for a document. “I forgot to ask, Barney, how are your feet?”

  “My feet?”

  “I’m looking at Inspector Maguire’s report — you remember his interview, later that same morning at the OPP detachment?”

  “Okay, yeah, sort of.”

  “You walked into his office in your socks. Your feet were swollen.”

  “Oh, yeah, my ankles too. I think I told him it was an allergy but I’m not sure.”

  “Well, what do you think caused the swelling?”

  “Objection,” says Khan, finally getting off his butt. “What he thinks has no probative value.”

  “Let’s go at it another way,” Beauchamp says. “Ten hours earlier you were wading ankle-deep through a rushing stream of Vigor-Gro?”

  “More like running. So fast I slipped, head first, I was gagging on it.”

  “You gulped some down, right?”

  “A pint at least.”

  “How long did that swelling last?”

  “About a week.”

  “Any lasting damage?”

  “Um, well, some of my toes went crooked.”

  “No more questions.”

  Nancy Faulk doesn’t have any either. Khan seems tempted to re-examine about those toes or even have Barney show them to the jury, but decides to let the poor bugger go. Wilson stalls, not sure how to get out of here, aims first for the jury room door before finally being led out by a court officer.

  Maguire wonders if the crooked toes are his only lasting damage.

  3

  Gaylene has Irwin Fleiger parked right outside the courtroom door, she’s not letting this fish get away, and when his name is called he bustles to the stand like he’s been kicked in the ass. Wears a shiny suit that may have fit him two decades ago when he wasn’t as porky.

  Like many cheesers Maguire has known, Fleiger gives off an air of resentment about the way the world has treated him, and that comes across early in his testimony, about how he’d been doing security for Chemican with a spotless record for five years and even had a title, Guardhouse Security Officer. Now he’s a doorman and lives off tips.

  Khan takes him through the plans and pictures, like with Wilson, except Fleiger doesn’t mumble and is clearer about tasks and staffing issues. You can see his contempt for the late Archie Gooch, maybe not so much in words as in his face, which puckers up like someone just farted when Gooch’s name comes up.

  He describes how Gooch came around the corner of the building, “kind of staggering,” as Barney Wilson barrelled out the door followed by “this alien like from a space movie, a seven-foot-tall insect with big bug eyes because of all those goggles and ear protectors.”

  Khan sees he has a live one and encourages Fleiger to describe without prompting about how Barney Wilson panicked his way into the guardhouse, and how the space alien was yelling about being the enchanter and the avenger and they were all going to die in the fires from hell. He also heard him yell, “This ship is going effing down!”

  That gets Justice Donahue’s nose vibrating. “Effing? Did he say effing?”

  “No, ma’am, the other word.”

  “We’re all adults here, what did he say?”

  “The F-word.”

  “His exact words, please.”

  “‘This ship is going fucking down.’”

  “Thank you.”

  Chuckles from the back pews muffle Maguire’s own grunt of laughter. What is funny is not Donahue’s attention to accuracy but the way she wiggles her nose like she’s congratulating herself for making the witness say a naughty word. Maguire wouldn’t be surprised if she has a little hang-up thing about dirty talk.

  Fleiger gets back on track. “He was screaming, ‘It’s going up!’ I wasn’t going to take a chance there was a bomb in there, and I grabbed Barney and we took off out the gate.”

  “And what happened to Archie Gooch?”

  “Well, he ran out before we did, and the terrorist guy went after him, and he was catching up, and then Gooch just fell flat on his face, and the guy chasing him raced on past and into the bush. We had already took off by that time.”

  “Would you say the man in the goggles was definitely pursuing Mr. Gooch?”

  Beauchamp bounces up, claiming Khan is “flagrantly” leading, and the judge asks him to rephrase, and Khan comes back with, “What was your impression as you watched Mr. Gooch running?”

  Beauchamp isn’t happy with that either. “Not an hour ago, my learned friend was arguing that one’s thoughts have no probative value.”

  Khan kind of shrugs, and tries again. “What did you see Archie Gooch doing?”

  “I saw him running for his life.”

  “Your witness.”

  Maguire knows Beauchamp is seething. But he doesn’t show it, he’s an Oscar-winning lawyer, and he’s actually smiling as he rises. Kind of like a crocodile.

  “Mr. Fleiger, you told us you had a spotless record with Chemican-International.”

  “Yes, sir, and they wouldn’t even give me a letter of recommendation.”

  “A spotless record, yet you were suspended for a week in May of last year. Why was that?”

  Fleiger reddens. So does Maguire, actually, but in his case with anger. Nobody told him about this, including, especially, Irwin Fleiger.

  “It was over, ah . . . they accused me of drinking on the job.”

  “According to the morning supervisor’s written report, as of seven thirty a.m. you were actual
ly drunk on the job.”

  These specifics obviously came from the personnel files Rivie Levitsky copied while Howie Griffin was snoring. Operation Vig never found those copies, so they had to have been deleted, burned, or garbaged.

  Levitsky has taken a break from her pen and paper so she can enjoy watching Beauchamp reduce Fleiger to the level of stammering fool. He denies he was pie-eyed but admits they found an empty mickey of Seagram’s in the guardhouse that he’d bought as a birthday gift to himself and thought he’d left it in his car, and so on.

  The sly old barrister circles for the kill. “You understand, Mr. Fleiger, that perjury is a serious crime?”

  “I understand but I honestly forgot all about it until you asked.”

  “Your memory can play games, eh?”

  “It was a mistake, no one’s perfect.”

  “So let me take you back to Tuesday, September eleventh. You watched Mr. Gooch running out the gate?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was running oddly, wasn’t he? Kind of staggering?”

  “Yeah, to be honest, he looked like he was high on something.”

  “Then you saw the man who looked like a giant insect running out the gate?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And he was running faster than Gooch, right?”

  “Yeah, definitely faster.”

  “So fast that he overtook Gooch?”

  “Yeah . . . No, wait. Overtook means . . .”

  “He went right past him, without touching him.”

  “I never saw no contact, to be honest.”

  “When Gooch, as you put it, fell on his face, the so-called enchanter was five feet ahead of him, yes?”